Stonerager Chronicles -

Stonerager Chronicles

By 2Charlie

This is a science fiction series that happens to include occasional erotic scenes. If you have not yet read previous chapters of this series, I highly recommend going back to do so before you read this chapter.

All characters in this story are of the age of majority.

Chapter 10

*****1030 Ship's Time, Day 55*****

"Okay," Dutch stressed, wanting to make certain, "Is everyone clear on the need to be invisible on this trip?"

Before they jumped out of the Rigel system, Dutch had taken a few moments to brief the Under Instruction watch crew on events that had transpired during his last visit to the Sol System. Stressing his desire to avoid contact with any iShan'tal patrols on this trip, he wanted to ensure he'd properly emphasized the point.

Lt. Griffon, the Under Instruction Officer of the Deck watch stander, affirmed on behalf of the entire watch team. "Yes, Captain, we are clear on the need for Odyssey to be undetected on this mission."

"Excellent," he acknowledged, clapping his hands to hammer home the point. "Then, Lt. Griffon, let's proceed to the Sol System under full Stealth Mode, if you please."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Griffon replied, then turned to her OPS officer. "Lt. Qui'Ho, engage Stealth Screens."

The ambient light on the bridge shifted to blue, and Lt. Qui'Ho announced, "Stealth Screens engaged, sir."

Turning to look at her Science Officer, Griffon continued down the pre-jump procedure. "Lt. Chang, maintain long-range scanning, and inform me the moment you detect any anomalous indications."

"Maintaining long-range scans, aye," Lt. Chang confirmed from his console.

"Lt. Charizzo, do you have our jump point plotted to the Sol System?" Griffon asked her NAV watch.

"Affirmative, sir. We'll be jumping into the Sol System out at the extreme edge of Neptune's orbit, and I also have an emergency jump trajectory laid in, just in case...." Lt. Charizzo confirmed, fingers brushing a few more controls on his console.

Tapping her comm badge, Griffon spoke aloud, "Prime, please advise all hands to prepare for jump."

The speaker overhead emitted a now-familiar boatswain's pipe, an ancient maritime whistle that Prime had adopted to use during ship-wide announcements. "All hands, stand by for Jump. Repeat, all hands, prepare for Jump."

Taking her seat in the command chair, Griffon took one last look around the bridge, then calmly ordered, "Lt. O'Connor, jump us to the Sol System."

"Aye, aye, sir. Jump engines coming online," O'Connor confirmed, closely watching her readouts.

Outside the cloaked vessel, a cone of energy blossomed into a tunnel. If an observer had been capable of viewing it, they would have marveled at the sight of the Odyssey slipping across the event horizon into the tunnel, appearing to stretch away into infinity before it, along with the tunnel, disappeared.

Far across the galaxy, in a remote sector of space, almost forgotten by those who'd once been aware of it, an accretion disc formed, persisted for a moment, an image of far away stars swirling within it, then disappeared.

"Jump completed successfully. We are at the edge of the Sol system," O'Connor informed the rest of the bridge.

"Scanning... no sign of any vessels in this vicinity," Chang reported from the Science station.

"Maintain your scans, Lt. Chang. We don't want to be surprised while we're here," Griffon cautioned. Turning to look at Dutch, she asked, "Captain, how would you like to proceed?"

"This needs to remain a clandestine visit, Lieutenant, so no in-depth planetary surveys. Not this trip, at least. Perhaps someday soon." Dutch paused, then went on to answer the question with more specifics. "There are only a few things I wanted for you all to see. I wanted you to see the vast graveyard of ships - what remains of the two enormous fleets that clashed during the final battle of the war. And I wanted you to see the remains of our point of origin - the Earth. Beyond that, time permitting, we might want to take a look at Mars, and perhaps check out the Jovian moons. Outside of that, we should keep our presence here brief. No reason to tempt fate, after all."

"Understood, sir," Griffon accepted. "Lt. Chang, can you make out the 'graveyard of ships', as the Captain has described it?"

"Affirmative. I see a field of nearly a thousand wrecks drifting just beyond the orbit of Mars," the Science officer replied.

"Please send the coordinates for the lead edge of the debris field to NAV," Griffon requested.

"Coordinates received," Charizzo confirmed a few moments later. After a short delay, he turned to face O'Connor at HELM. "Course plotted."

"Lt. O'Connor, let's go take a look at history," Griffon grinned.

"We're pretty far out, sir," O'Connor informed Lt. Griffon. "Roughly twenty billion kilometers, give or take. So, at standard sublight, we're looking at about sixty-one hours... do we want to go a bit faster, sir?"

Griffon turned to Dutch, one eyebrow lifted in a silent question.

Scratching his chin, he considered the options. The training cruise was supposed to last about another week, but he'd planned to do more than simply plod through a dead system. Coming to a decision, he decided to give the crew a say in the matter.

"Okay, so, we could speed things along - say, bump our speed up to fifty percent light speed - that would get us to our first point of interest in about thirty-seven hours-ish. Assuming we need to run silent, that leaves little we can do in the way of training. Alternatively, we could jump ahead, so to speak, and go directly to Earth, then work our way out to Mars, then the graveyard, then decide whether we continue probing this region, or move on. Your call, Griffon."

Maintaining eye contact with Dutch for exactly five seconds, she turned to look aft. "Lt. Chang, are you able to detect any activity within this system? Any indication of iShan'tal patrol?"

"Negative, sir. All scans show we're alone here," the Science Officer responded.

Turning back forward, she addressed the Navigator. "Lt. Charizzo, please calculate a jump to put us four hundred kilometers from Earth - that should keep us far enough from any debris from the moon."

Fingers blazing across his panel, Munez Charizzo double-checked his jump plot, then turned to face Griffon, "Jump plotted, sir."

"Very good," she responded. Tapping her comm badge, she spoke to the ship's AI, "Prime, would you please advise the crew to prepare for a jump to Earth."

The boatswain's pipe sounded once again across the ship's primary comm circuit. "All hands, prepare for jump to Earth. Repeat, all hands, prepare for jump to Earth."

"Lt. O'Connor, execute the jump," Griffon ordered, tightening her grip on the command chair armrests.

"Executing jump in three... two... one... now." O'Connor stabbed a control on her panel, and once again, a circular whirl of stars appeared in front of them on the main screen.

As soon as the star-swirl passed, a tragic sight confronted them. Off in the distance ahead of the ship, they could see a dark, cratered world that looked nothing like the historical blue, cloud-covered images the crew had memorized from their core education. A collective gasp could be heard as each of the bridge watch standers silently considered the view in front of them.

The hatch next to Dutch opened, and Jjan'tira entered the bridge. Coming to stand beside him, she took his hand for a moment, silently absorbing the image on the screen.

"Lt. Chang, any sign of company?" Griffon asked quietly, still staring at the ruined planet ahead of them.

Turning to check his screens, he observed for several seconds before responding, "Nothing, sir. No sign we have been detected thus far."

Nodding to herself, she then turned slightly to her left. "NAV, continue to maintain that emergency Jump plot."

"Affirmative," Charizzo responded calmly.

"HELM, put us in a low orbit," Griffon ordered.

"Moving to a low orbit, aye," O'Connor confirmed.

"Chang, if you can spare an eye for what's below us, please begin collecting data on the planet - as much as you can without launching any sensor probes."

"Commencing scan. Details are coming in quick - these sensors are pretty powerful," he commented. "I should have about as much as we'll get minus probes in about twenty orbits - perhaps a bit less."

"Very well," Griffon nodded. "OPS, please keep an extra eye on long-range sensors, just in case."

"Monitoring long-range sensors," Qui'Ho confirmed.

The hatch to the bridge opened, and Jjan'tira released his hand as Crew X-Ray watch standers entered to conduct watch relief.

Dutch was casually observing the various officers conducting their turnovers when he felt a sharp pinch on his ass that made him jump slightly. Turning, he saw Jjan'tira struggling to keep from breaking out in laughter, mischief dancing in her twinkling green eyes.

"I am here to relieve you, Captain," she disclosed in an even, calm tone, though mirth danced around the corners of her mouth.

"Very well, Lieutenant," he sighed, then straightened and took on a serious tone. "The ship is in a low orbit while conducting a passive-scan planetary survey. We are continuing to run under Stealth Screens, minimizing our energy signature. Once the planetary survey has been concluded, please set course for Mars, at one-quarter standard speed."

"Understood, sir," she stated, then repeated back her orders. "Continue to run under Stealth Screens. Minimize our energy signature. Upon completion of planetary survey, set course for Mars and head there at one-quarter standard sublight. I have the watch."

Looking around for just a moment, he leaned in to give her a quick kiss, then acknowledged, "I stand relieved." Stepping away from the command chair, he said, "Let me know if anything unexpected occurs, won't you?"

"Yes, dear," she snickered under her breath. "Now go away! Get some rest."

Chuckling to himself at how comfortable even his youngest wife was with bossing him around, Dutch left the bridge and headed for the post-watch debriefing. In his head, he was already putting together talking points for the session, as well as questions he wanted to ask them about their impression of the human point-of-origin - how had it made them feel to see it in such a state? He wanted to begin massaging into their psyche that such a thing must never again be allowed to happen - not to Rigellia - not to any human worlds. He also wanted to explore their thoughts on how his idea of the Alliance could help prevent such an outcome from being a possibility.

He smelled the pizza, even before he entered the briefing room, and laughed quietly when his stomach grumbled loudly in response. His crew - the wives and the trainees - had adopted the habit of hosting some sort of meal or snack during the post-watch debriefing sessions. As soon as his love for brownies had become known among his women, for example, they became common snack items, and plates of left-over brownies rarely lasted long in the galley.

Entering the briefing room, Dutch took note that, of his three off-watch wives, only Alisia was present. He saw no sign of Pheebs or D'narius. Shrugging mentally, he entered and closed the hatch behind him, nodding to the others present as he stepped up to the table and grabbed a couple of slices of pizza and a drink.

Pulling up a seat, Dutch began scarfing down his food, listening to the idle chatter in the room. The trainees were struggling to sum up their feelings about the state in which they'd found the Earth, dismayed at the extent of the damage that had been done.

Sid Qui Chang was shaking his head as he discussed his initial scanner readings with Jules Takahashi. "I mean, the level of destruction was one thing, but the absolute sterility of the remaining mass was unexpected. It's as if the entire planet had been blow-torched while being bathed in some form of exotic radiation that completely removed all traces of organic matter - everything - all the way down to the micro-biome!" Sid shook his head in dismay, "I've never seen anything like it."

Takahashi nodded her head in agreement. "I've seen testing grounds after new weapons tests, and there's always some form of surviving biotics - sometimes ranging from insects to tiny microbial life, but I don't think I've ever seen such a thorough level of sterilization."

Dutch decided he wanted them to further understand the context in which he first observed the aftermath of the destruction of Earth. "Try to imagine," he began, "returning to your world - for now, let's substitute Rigellia for Earth, to give you a sense of perspective - after a brief subjective absence. From your point of view, you've been gone a few days, but when you return, instead of the cloud-swathed, water-covered planet that you left, you come back to this. That's what it was like for me when I first visited this area a few weeks ago."

"But you'd been away from Earth for more than a millennia," Jules started to interject, before Dutch cut her off.

"True, but subjectively, I'd only been away for a matter of days," he reminded her. "I 'died' within the first few minutes of my original test flight. I had only been revived for a few days before we made our way back here. It was a truly shocking discovery, I can assure you! I didn't even have the context that you all have, the knowledge of the war with the iShan'tal."

"Damn, that must have been one helluva mind fuck, Captain," Faith O'Connor commiserated, scooting her chair around to join in the conversation. As they continued discussing the survey, the rest of the members of Crew Whiskey drew their chairs into a circle to be part of the discussion.

"So, next we're on our way to Mars," Charlise Griffon prompted. "What will we find there?"

Dutch shrugged his shoulders. "I have no idea what to expect," he admitted. "When I left, we had an extensive set of settlements on the Moon, and were just beginning to establish the domed cities at Utopia Planitia and Isidis Planitia. I can only imagine how Mars might have developed over the centuries..."

"Actually," Alisia pointed out, "Prime has access to the historical records and could likely summarize that information for us."

"Not necessary," Griffon replied with an odd smirk. "The history of the development of the Terran Empire is part of every Rigellian schoolchild's education. Most of us could probably rattle off facts and figures about how Mars was terraformed over the course of three centuries, until humans no longer required atmospheric domes to live there. After that, Mars became the agrarian hub for the Sol system, by far outproducing the Earth in terms of metric gigatonnage of food goods. By the thirtieth century, over five billion people lived and worked on Mars, although the two domed cities you mentioned had been gone for nearly five hundred years, as they were both in what eventually became the seabed for the Utopian Ocean, which covered much of the northern hemisphere. The majority of cities were in the southern hemisphere, save for the region between Olympus and Tempe Terra."

"Don't forget the orbiting shipyards!" an excited Munez Charizzo added. "My great-great-grandfather on my dad's side ran the shipyards on Demos. My grandfather used to tell me stories about how his grandfather would send him model kits of some of the ships they built there. He'd been part of the construction crew on the Hephaestus class carriers - or at least, that's what Grandad always said. He took me to a museum in Dyson City once to show me an old Ziggurat model starfighter - said the Hephaestus carried hundreds of them."

"Those were terrifying to see in action," Alisia reminisced, to the astonishment of the others there. "They were much better armed and armored than our Sheen-Jai snub fighters, although we were more maneuverable. But if they ever got a weapons lock on you, you'd better get right the fuck out of there!"

"Ummm, how do you...?" Takahashi started to ask, before O'Connor cut her off.

"That's right!" O'Connor snapped her fingers in recollection. "You were a fighter pilot in the war, on the iShan'tal side, before you were sent to negotiate for peace."

Nodding sagely, Alisia agreed. "I can tell you, those Terran carriers were one of the reasons we were trying to negotiate for peace. Just one of them could ruin your day, and the Terran shipyards were turning them out as fast as we could turn out the Lam'Daal Dreadnaughts. To be involved in those battles was the stuff of nightmares, I assure you."

"Getting back to the issue at hand," Dutch said, mainly to get the crew's focus back on the upcoming survey of Mars, "I will be curious to see the level of devastation on Mars, as compared to that which we encountered on Earth. The only other human settlements that we investigated on our last visit were on Ganymede, and those consisted of large cities that had been beneath atmospheric domes. They had all suffered significant damage from orbital bombardment, leaving the moon uninhabitable. Ganymede was completely devoid of life, save for a single survivor, who we found encased in a sleeper tube in an underground bunker that had somehow survived."

All eyes once again shifted to Alisia, as they realized the identity of the survivor to whom Dutch was referring. The lithe redhead shrugged demurely. "In truth, that was quite an eventful day, and I remember very little of it. It was the days following that forever changed my life," she added, smiling gently but meaningfully at Dutch.

Clearing his throat, Dutch decided to get back to the subject matter of concern. "Let's get back to the debriefing so that we can all get on with our day. Griffon, let's start with you - your thoughts on the watch?"

"There's quite a bit to unpack, sir," she began, assembling her thoughts with care. "It was our first jump - two of them, in fact. Let's see, we were running on ultra-low EMCON, so that was new - I mean, we did similar when we rushed to confront the Noraxi raiders, but this was different. It affected how we conducted the planetary survey - we couldn't deploy surveillance drones to assist, so the survey will lack a good deal of information, which is instructional in and of itself. All in all, I think we proved to ourselves that we could sneak into this region successfully, which is noteworthy, but also are learning that Stealth significantly curtails how much we can accomplish."

"Good observations," Dutch complimented her, then turned to O'Conner. "And what did you learn at the HELM, O'Connor?"

The debriefing continued for another twenty minutes or so, with Dutch making sure that they each had the opportunity to add their thoughts or impressions. Overall, they largely echoed what Griffon had said from the outset.

As soon as they'd all had a chance to speak, Dutch concluded the briefing, "That's good enough for now. Go enjoy some downtime. Just plan to be back here later if you want to monitor the survey of Mars. I'll probably be here, if not on the bridge, as I didn't swing by last time I was in the neighborhood, and I must admit to being very curious myself."

"Thank you, sir," Griffon said, heading for the hatch, leading the bulk of her watch crew. O'Connor hesitated at the hatchway for a moment, looking as if she wanted to ask another question, then turned and exited, leaving Alisia and Dutch alone in the briefing room.

Alisia approached him and turned to sit on his lap, but Dutch gently stopped her.

"Why don't we take this to our quarters?" he suggested calmly, giving her a smoldering look. "I'd rather not start something here that would lead to issues if one of the trainees were to walk in on us."

She just shrugged, a wry grin forming on her face. "Depending on the trainee, they might ask to join us," she informed him impishly.